Thinkers & Creative Types
“Let me be clear about this: I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.”
—Keith Richards
Thinkers & Creative Types
“Let me be clear about this: I don’t have a drug problem, I have a police problem.”
—Keith Richards
“The supposed astronomical proofs of the theory [of relativity], as cited and claimed by Einstein, do not exist. He is a confusionist. The Einstein theory is a fallacy. The theory that ether does not exist, and that gravity is not a force but a property of space can only be described as a crazy vagary, a disgrace to our age.”
—Charles Lane Poor, American astronomer
“A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong.”
—Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA
“I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before.”
—English theologian William Buckland, who loved eating unusual meat. According to the writer Augustus Hare, he was once shown “the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. And, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost forever.”
“We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated...The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain.”
—Professor José Delgado, Yale University
“What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.”
—Lord Byron
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
—Isaac Asimov
“Medical scientists are nice people, but you should not let them treat you.”
—August Karl Gustav Bier, German surgeon, the first to perform spinal anesthesia and intravenous regional anesthesia
“I hight don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine. I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine.”
—Jack Parsons, rocket scientist
“The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.”
“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
“The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.”
—Nikola Tesla, scientist and inventor
“My music is best understood by children and animals.”
—Igor Stravinsky
“What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven
“I may not be a first rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.”
—Richard Strauss
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”
—Hector Berlioz
“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left.”
—Oscar Levant
“If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.”
—Dan Poynter
“One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.”
—Gioachino Rossini, on Richard Wagner
“Listening to the fifth symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.”
—Aaron Copland, on Vaughan Williams
“She’s only pretty in that she has two small black eyes and a good figure.”
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, on his future wife, Constanze
“Write to me and don’t be so lazy. Otherwise I’ll have to give you a thrashing. What fun! I’ll break your head.”
—Mozart, to his sister
“He was a six and a half foot scowl.”
—Igor Stravinsky, on Sergei Rachmaninov
“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.”
—Louis Armstrong
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”
“Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk in order to provide articles for people who can’t read.”
—Frank Zappa
“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.”
—Elvis Presley
“If I didn’t do this well, I just wouldn’t have anything to do…I can’t cook, and I’d be a terrible housewife.”
—Freddie Mercury, Queen
“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”
—Angus Young, AC/DC
“There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between.”
—Thomas Beecham
“There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won’t.”
—Annie Lennox
“I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.”
—Jimi Hendrix
“After I saw Jimmy [Hendrix] play, I just went home and wondered what the f*** I was going to do with my life.”
—Jeff Beck
“Actually I don’t remember being born, it must have happened during one of my blackouts.”
—Jim Morrison
“I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that, either. So I’ll keep it!”
—Quincy Jones
“I smash guitars because I like them.”
—Pete Townshend
“I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.”
—Duke Ellington
“Dogs smoke in France.”
—Ozzy Osbourne
“When I was a little boy, I told my dad, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a musician.’ My dad said: ‘You can’t do both, Son.’”
—Chet Atkins
“If you’re listening to a rock star to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.”
—Alice Cooper
“To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.”
—Keith Moon
“Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.”
—Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails
“I think John would have liked Free As A Bird. In fact, I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I’m dead, making them into hit songs.”
—George Harrison
“In the end we’re all Jerry Springer Show guests, really, we just haven’t been on the show.”
—Marilyn Manson
“If I knew I had to play this song the rest of my life I probably woulda wrote something else….”
—Joe Walsh, on “Rocky Mountain Way”
“When an instrument fails on stage it mocks you and must be destroyed!”
—Trent Reznor
“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.”
—Igor Stravinsky
“I never practice my guitar…from time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.”
—Wes Montgomery
“Writer’s block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.”
—Steve Martin
“People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.”
—Stephen King
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.”
“If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”
“The Bible. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.”
“Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.”
“Religion was invented when the first con-man met the first fool.”
“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”
—Mark Twain